A bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to modify provisions relating to the exemption for computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers, or other similarly skilled workers.

None of the IT guys working here (in Michigan) get overtime. They are all salary. I'm Salary, an electrical engineer, even though up to 75% of my time involves crawling around and being a mechanic basically.

I do not see any problem allowing exemptions for IT guys. As an EE who does many things the IT guys around here do, and seeing their work compared to mine, I see no difference in them not being paid overtime and me not being paid overtime.

None of the IT guys working here (in Michigan) get overtime. They are all salary. I'm Salary, an electrical engineer, even though up to 75% of my time involves crawling around and being a mechanic basically.

I do not see any problem allowing exemptions for IT guys. As an EE who does many things the IT guys around here do, and seeing their work compared to mine, I see no difference in them not being paid overtime and me not being paid overtime.

Hurrah! One more in the "I don't get it so you shouldn't either " basket. We're going to get you guys screwed with us.

None of the IT guys working here (in Michigan) get overtime. They are all salary. I'm Salary, an electrical engineer, even though up to 75% of my time involves crawling around and being a mechanic basically.

I do not see any problem allowing exemptions for IT guys. As an EE who does many things the IT guys around here do, and seeing their work compared to mine, I see no difference in them not being paid overtime and me not being paid overtime.

Hurrah! One more in the "I don't get it so you shouldn't either " basket. We're going to get you guys screwed with us.

I see EE and IT professionals in the same light as a contractor that quotes a job for a set price. I agreed to do the work they required for a yearly payment. If it takes me longer at times to complete that work, I just have to deal with it. If things break in the middle of the night and I'm needed, I'll have to try and make it less likely to break or easier for people who are not me to fix. I've spent the last year making my machine programs nearly bullet proof and making them announce to the operators exactly what the issue is all the time.

The good thing about being salary is not having to deal with accounting and all the attendance things (I don't know about where you work, but here it can be a pain in the *** with all the attendance policy rules). Being able to leave early (work load permitting), take extended breaks/lunches, step out to do something (bank, etc.) if needed.

I was unaware that anyone salaried WAS making overtime. When I first went salary at my old job, I was actually taking a pay hit for it due to the loss of OT. But I was trading that for consistency in my pay which mattered more to me as a single parent.

It's law in Alberta (or was 5-6 years ago) that anyone on salary who was not an actual manager (had to meet 3 of 5 criteria to actually qualify as management)got paid overtime after 40 hours/week or after 8hours/day. Really weird, especially given that everyone's so desperate for staff there that they'd be giving bigger perks anyway and laws like this were completely unnecessary.

The ones who are going to get punished with this are not the salaried permanent employees, but the experts hired on a per project basis. Yes, they agreed to do a set amount of work as part of their contract, but they are also at the mercy and whim of the person who is in charge of the project, who works for a completely different company and is going to be making demands and changes and sudden requests at odd times, especially near the end of the project.

Say you hire a dude to code a small Android app to allow interface with your ERP solution. You give him the project parameters, and agree to an hourly wage for billable work. You promise him the API and other necessary code, but don't get around to sending it to him for the next four months, even though he's checking back with you weekly and asking for it. So he's not sending you any billable hours during those four months, even though he had planned on working on your project and may have turned down other jobs because any day now he's got your thing coming in.

You finally send him the API and code he needs, and now he has two months to program the app he planned on having six months to finish. He has to put in 50 hours a week because of your procrastination.

You owe him overtime, dammit.

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FFXI: Catwho on Bismarck: Retired December 2014

Thayos wrote:

I can't understand anyone who skips the cutscenes of a Final Fantasy game. That's like going to Texas and not getting barbecue.

I can understand that. I have no idea how it operates for anyone else in the same contract situation (say, graphic artists or language translators) to know if I should find this an injustice for IT folks.

The ones who are going to get punished with this are not the salaried permanent employees, but the experts hired on a per project basis. Yes, they agreed to do a set amount of work as part of their contract, but they are also at the mercy and whim of the person who is in charge of the project, who works for a completely different company and is going to be making demands and changes and sudden requests at odd times, especially near the end of the project.

Say you hire a dude to code a small Android app to allow interface with your ERP solution. You give him the project parameters, and agree to an hourly wage for billable work. You promise him the API and other necessary code, but don't get around to sending it to him for the next four months, even though he's checking back with you weekly and asking for it. So he's not sending you any billable hours during those four months, even though he had planned on working on your project and may have turned down other jobs because any day now he's got your thing coming in.

You finally send him the API and code he needs, and now he has two months to program the app he planned on having six months to finish. He has to put in 50 hours a week because of your procrastination.

You owe him overtime, dammit.

I don't know for sure, but I don't think this extends to contract employees. Regardless, a contract is a contract. If the IT guy suspects he may have some 14 hour days he should stipulate in the contract that he'll get a higher hourly wage for anything over 8 hours/day or 40hrs/week.

I actually haven't been eligible for overtime the entire time I have worked at this particular job, so that won't really affect me too much. Actually, my last job wasn't OT eligible either come to think of it. Hmm.

It's law in Alberta (or was 5-6 years ago) that anyone on salary who was not an actual manager (had to meet 3 of 5 criteria to actually qualify as management)got paid overtime after 40 hours/week or after 8hours/day. Really weird, especially given that everyone's so desperate for staff there that they'd be giving bigger perks anyway and laws like this were completely unnecessary.

When I was out there I got my home paid for, I got my food paid for, I got my schooling paid for. For the first 6 months I worked 3 weeks on and 1 week off, completely paid for Salaried + OT. I saved a sh*t ton of money. I moved to Red Deer and took school over the next 3 years, paid for by the company. When the economy went south (o8/09) my job vanished.

So I took my Industrial Controls and Electrical Technology diplomas that I got in Alberta and took them to Ontario where I gave up the salary gig and went hourly. I got an education and got paid for it. To bad I still owe a stupid amount of money to the government for my first two trips to school after high school. But Im down to the last 5 grand of a near 45Kdebt. Thanks to Alberta Oil Sands development.

I don't think anyone who has a marketable skill* in todays marketplace should take salaried positions, most Salaried positions pay way less overall for a lot of skilled trades. But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do for work that suits you.

*by this I mean training in any number of marketable fields. Be it education or job specific training.

In my opinion, anyone who takes salary should never get paid OT. Do you give back any of that pay when you work less than 40 hours?

Where I work, our salaried supervisors get OT when they have to work a 12 hour shift only to cover the absence of another supervisor. Any salaried manager can get OT if they are required to work an entire shift on the weekend. If a supervisor has to stay late to finish his paperwork, or a manager needs to pop in on a Saturday to get caught up on something, they are doing it on their own time. To me, that's fair.

In my opinion, anyone who takes salary should never get paid OT. Do you give back any of that pay when you work less than 40 hours?

Where I work, our salaried supervisors get OT when they have to work a 12 hour shift only to cover the absence of another supervisor. Any salaried manager can get OT if they are required to work an entire shift on the weekend. If a supervisor has to stay late to finish his paperwork, or a manager needs to pop in on a Saturday to get caught up on something, they are doing it on their own time. To me, that's fair.

Our "salaried" shift foremen are in a similar boat. During the weekdays, they get paid a set 8 hours per day. If they work the weekends (scheduled work, not just coming in to check on things, etc.), they get paid extra for that day. They usually have to come in an hour early to work with the previous shift's foreman and setup the work schedule for the day, and stay about an hour over to pass on important info to the next foreman.

Also, I'm pretty sure these exemptions are not 100%. Just because they add IT to the exemption list, doesn't mean an employer HAS to make them no OT. It just means they can legally make them no OT. At least, that's how it is in Michigan. Many of the friends I graduated with are doing similar things as me, yet working a job that gets OT.

I think on a typical basis a salaried person should be expected to work 38-45 hours per week, leaning towards the 45 side. If they start going over 50 hours because of circumstances that are out of their control, I believe additional compensation is fair.

In my opinion, anyone who takes salary should never get paid OT. Do you give back any of that pay when you work less than 40 hours?

Where I work, our salaried supervisors get OT when they have to work a 12 hour shift only to cover the absence of another supervisor. Any salaried manager can get OT if they are required to work an entire shift on the weekend. If a supervisor has to stay late to finish his paperwork, or a manager needs to pop in on a Saturday to get caught up on something, they are doing it on their own time. To me, that's fair.

I don't agree with that. If a manager has to cover an extra shift, they can take extra time off later on. That's our company policy. Anyone not liking it is free to chose another employer.

I think on a typical basis a salaried person should be expected to work 38-45 hours per week, leaning towards the 45 side. If they start going over 50 hours because of circumstances that are out of their control, I believe additional compensation is fair.

Don't ever apply at one of my companies, as you'll be greatly let down.

eh in some fields that is almost impossible to guess at. Service industry can generally bank on certain times of year for things, holidays, season changes, etc. Other industries such as mine for example depends on a slew of unpredictable occurrences. If I was in a salaried position I would never expect a time frame of my hours. One day I can do nothing all day, I sit at home on call sometimes because im 2 minutes from the plant, other times I stay and sit in my office doing paper work and playing gameboy. Sometimes I actually have to work.

There is no way to predict when something in the plant will fault, a drop of oil can spill off anytime on to any proxy anywhere in the plant, a robot could fault out at any time. Its just to unpredictable to give a time line.

It is a noble expectation but generally unrealistic in a great many work industries.

I think the expectation of how much people are expected to work should be laid out pretty clearly when you're hired.

Agreed. Last thing I want is someone who wants more when they work more hours, when I know at some point, I'm going to expect them to work more hours and am not willing to pay them more for it. Expectations should be clear for both parties before they start working.

Where I work, IT staff take comp days when they finish a big time-intensive project. Same way I would.

Yeah, we get those too. the part that I always find annoying is that many things in IT, particularily in the server arena, have to be done after hours or during weekends. It seems to me there should be some sort of compensation for work intruding into my personal rest and relaation time other than just hour per hour relocation. That 2 hour time period on saturday is "worth" more to me personally in my view than leaving 2 hours early some other day. an intact saturday means I can accomplesh a project. breaking that up into smaller chunks doesn't allow me to get as far in that project, or in some cases even start it. I definitly agree that those time chunks are required though. you can't just down the file servers during the day at a large organization. I just wish there was a mechanism in place to recognize that evening and weekend hours suck when they aren't the normal schedule. That won't ever happen though, so i'm not going to lose much sleep over it.

I learned that's actually one of the few advantages of having an outsourced team of experts in India. We have the NOC do a lot of patches, reboots, hotfixes, and stuff at 1AM EST, which they're cool with since it's 11AM their time.

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FFXI: Catwho on Bismarck: Retired December 2014

Thayos wrote:

I can't understand anyone who skips the cutscenes of a Final Fantasy game. That's like going to Texas and not getting barbecue.

In my opinion, anyone who takes salary should never get paid OT. Do you give back any of that pay when you work less than 40 hours?

Where I work, our salaried supervisors get OT when they have to work a 12 hour shift only to cover the absence of another supervisor. Any salaried manager can get OT if they are required to work an entire shift on the weekend. If a supervisor has to stay late to finish his paperwork, or a manager needs to pop in on a Saturday to get caught up on something, they are doing it on their own time. To me, that's fair.

I don't agree with that. If a manager has to cover an extra shift, they can take extra time off later on. That's our company policy. Anyone not liking it is free to chose another employer.

That is actually our official policy. But since having other people around to cover comp time costs more than just paying OT, they just pay for the OT. Once the building market improves, we will probably go back to comp time, but as of now, it's senseless to hire a spare member of management.

eh in some fields that is almost impossible to guess at. Service industry can generally bank on certain times of year for things, holidays, season changes, etc. Other industries such as mine for example depends on a slew of unpredictable occurrences. If I was in a salaried position I would never expect a time frame of my hours. One day I can do nothing all day, I sit at home on call sometimes because im 2 minutes from the plant, other times I stay and sit in my office doing paper work and playing gameboy. Sometimes I actually have to work.

There is no way to predict when something in the plant will fault, a drop of oil can spill off anytime on to any proxy anywhere in the plant, a robot could fault out at any time. Its just to unpredictable to give a time line.

It is a noble expectation but generally unrealistic in a great many work industries.

What you just described is the expectation. Also I'm referring to salaried people specifically here. your job would likely not be salaried just because of the unpredictability.

]Where I work, our salaried supervisors get OT when they have to work a 12 hour shift only to cover the absence of another supervisor. Any salaried manager can get OT if they are required to work an entire shift on the weekend. If a supervisor has to stay late to finish his paperwork, or a manager needs to pop in on a Saturday to get caught up on something, they are doing it on their own time. To me, that's fair.

Not management or a supervisor but I have a similar set up on OT. I don't get paid any overtime unless I am required to work on a day which I ordinarily don't work - but even that is pretty restricted - like if someone is having a press conference on Sunday and I do a call around for them, I don't/can't(? never tried TBH) claim overtime.

But when we are asked to work all night for one reason or another, or if we had to take a regular Saturday shift we get OT.

Instead of OT I get an extra month I can either cash in as extra pay or vacation. So we all get exactly the same regardless of who works more over weekends etc, which is sort meh but w/e. Generally speaking the employer is winning on the deal, but it all depends. The last year we had a bunch of stuff happen which completely sidelined my shop so it was a lot slower than usual, and we still got the full allowance so I think it is pretty balanced.

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lolgaxe wrote:

When it comes to sitting around not doing anything for long periods of time, only being active for short windows, and marginal changes and sidegrades I'd say FFXI players were the perfect choice for politicians.